


A Wild Shade

by WolfOak15



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Anthropomorphic Ponies (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Childhood Friends, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Kidnapping, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28801692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfOak15/pseuds/WolfOak15
Summary: Seven years ago, her best friend disappeared into the shadows and the greenery of the woods. Into the realm of the changelings.Back then, she didn't have the strength to hold on to him, too young and small to be of much help. But not anymore.Now a grown mare, Starlight vows to take her friend back. No matter what he turns into, or if he screams and thrashes in her arms. She will not let got this time.
Relationships: Starlight Glimmer/Sunburst
Kudos: 5
Collections: Tam Lin Fan Lin





	A Wild Shade

> _The Queen of Fairies caught me_  
>  _when from my horse I fell_

“You’re leaving.”

She words it like a statement, with no hesitation in her voice, killing his smile before it had a chance to bloom. He looks down instead, at his hand. The smooth pebble tumbles around in his nervous fingers.

“Yes.” He says and throws the pebble into the lake.

It skips once, thrice, seven times before it sinks into the water with a splash, the ripples disturb the mirror-like surface and the summer sky distorts into various shades of blue. He never made a stone skip that far before. 

“When?”

He picks another stone. “Tomorrow morning.”

“And you’re just telling me now?” Starlight stands up, fury and surprise twisting her features. 

Sunburst flinches. It was almost comedic, seeing the lanky stallion coward in front of her, who was easily a head taller than her ever since he hit his growth spurt, but Starlight was too incensed to laugh. Her best friend was a scatterbrain by nature but it hurt, all the same, to see just how low she had fallen on his lists of priorities. It was better to be angry than to sit and wallow in her own misery, feeling sorry for herself and mourning a dying friendship. 

He raises his hands in a placating gesture. “I know, I’m sorry, it’s just that so much happened this year, there was never a right time.”

Starlight keeps her glare, but she knew he was right.

Ever since she turned thirteen her life changed drastically. She could no longer spend days on end playing in the woods, or read fairy tales, or even run through the gardens with the other children playing pretend. No, she had to stay inside and learn how to be a lady—how to do magic like a lady, how to talk like a lady, how to run a household as a lady would. All terribly boring stuff, but not unbearable.

“I couldn’t find a chance to tell you, without everyone getting in the way,” Sunburst admitted, tossing the stone back into the lake and the tiny droplets stained the hem of Starlight’s green dress.

Starlight could tolerate the lessons and the longer, more conservative dresses adult mares had to wear. What she couldn’t stand was the new level of scrutiny she was under, especially when a male visitor was concerned.

The colts that used to tease her and pull at her pigtails now acted smarmy, bowing low and trying to kiss her hand while staring into her eyes. They would tell her sweet things and compare her hair to flowers, or her eyes to gemstones. As much as she loathed those visits, she was forced to entertain them, or come up with an excuse to avoid them; the only ones who enjoyed them where the maids that chuckled at her misfortune and her governess, who gave her a knowing smile that Starlight hated.

“My father told me when you got accepted into Magic School,” Starlight said and kicked a loose stone into the water. “He had to tell me because my best friend couldn’t even bother to send me a note.”

“I tried to tell you, the last time when we walked through the gardens,” Sunburst sighed, wounded by the accusation in Starlight’s words. “But Suri wouldn’t stop _hovering_ , and the maids kept staring at us like we were a _spectacle_ , it’s hard to talk with everyone staring and giggling.” 

The two best friends kept their eyes on the lake, unable to face each other just yet. The wind and the birds fill the silence between them, a song they never heard until recently when the laughter was smothered and their games put aside for more thoughtful silences like this one. 

When they were younger, her father used to tease that they were like a pair of wild animals, something that they took to heart. Sunburst would run around the woods with Starlight in tow, screaming and laughing, their manes wild and their clothes dirty from rolling in the grass and climbing trees. Their maids would fuss over them when they came home in the evenings, but no one questioned their playtime or wondered why they were such good friends despite the two-year age gap between them. They just were.

That was until she turned thirteen, and everything changed.

In the eyes of society, they were no longer children, so when he came to see her, they no longer played. Instead, they would stroll through the gardens to talk, or sometimes have lunch together, but those simple activities were ruined by the pressure that surrounded them—anticipation, like a crowd, had gathered and was studying their every move. This never failed to kill whatever good mood or cheer they could build during their brief time together.

Starlight’s anger vanished—she could never stay mad at him for too long—and was replaced with melancholy. It settled on her shoulders like a heavy shawl, and she sat down again, hugging her knees.

“If you had told me sooner, that you were leaving, I would have made more of an effort to see you,” Starlight confessed, and hid her face in her knees. “We could have spent more time together and…it wouldn’t hurt so much to see you go.”

His heart twisted at the sight. Sunburst could handle her proud and brash behavior better than anyone, she was like a steam train in that regard: unless he knew what had set her off and fix it, it was best to just let her be until she was done. It had been a while since he has last seen that fire and the thought scared him, for he didn’t want to be the reason that her mischievous smile was smothered. 

“I’ll come back every holiday,” Sunburst said gently, sitting beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder, “and I’ll write to you, and send you gifts from Canterlot, you’ll see.”

“But it won’t be the same!” She knew she sounded like a petulant child, but she didn’t care. Her acting like an adult had pushed her best friend away, and she tired of it. “This whole year has been horrible! Everything changed and I hate it, I wish…I wish things could stay the same forever, that way you wouldn’t have to leave!”

She didn’t have the courage to look up, but his hand never left from its place on her shoulder. She felt his grip tightened, then slackened before dropping entirely.

“Maybe…change isn’t bad, Starlight,” Sunburst said quietly.

She shook her head. “No, it’s horrible, it ruins perfectly good things, like our friendship.”

“But if things didn’t change…then I wouldn’t have realized how I feel.”

The words were so strange that Starlight looked at him, confused. He didn’t look at her, he kept his blue gaze on the ground, his floppy orange hair covering his face like a curtain of sunshine, his hands clasped together in a tight grip. Her own posture relaxed, the temptation to hug him was immense, since she had never seen him so wound up before.

“Sunburst, what are you talking about?”

He stood up, quick and sudden, causing Starlight to jump in her place. He paced for a moment around the glen, before he gathers the courage to turn to her. He stood in front of her, then fell to one knee, like an adventurer in the presence of a princess.

“Starlight, did you know my father was a knight?”

Starlight’s head tilted to the side. “Yes, Father spoke highly of him.” Not just her father, the whole court, in general, spoke fondly of Sir Sunspot, of how brave he was, how strong and noble he had been. Of what a shame it was that he died so soon.

“I wanted to be like him, but I couldn’t…” He clutched his left forearm, where his cutie mark was covered by the sleeves of his shirt. “My talents are with magic, not with fighting or swordplay, and even then, I’m not the strongest wizard around…and yet, I worked hard every day last year just so I could attend magic school, so I could become a wizard one day and be worthy of you!”

Starlight felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “Sunburst…?”

He looked at her with such determination that Starlight was dumbstruck. He had never looked at her like that, with such intensity—with such _devotion—_ and it scared her. She hid her shaking hands by clutching the fabric of her dress, all the while her heart doing cartwheels and her stomach tingling with butterflies. 

“I couldn’t be by your side as your knight, but I could be as a wizard.” Sunburst paused, took a deep breath, and plowed forward. “When I’ll graduate, I’ll speak to your father and ask for your hand in marriage.”

She heard his words, but the meaning didn’t hit her until a moment later, and when it did, she felt like the world had stopped spinning. “M-Marriage?”

Sunburst flushed. “I’ll be gone for some time, five years at the least, I know it’s a long time but I will come back! And I’ll come back as a great wizard! That way no one in your father’s court can’t oppose to the match and—”

“Sunburst!” She cut him off, trying to find her wits in this word that was off-kilter. “Why?”

That question ringed the loudest in her mind. In all their time together, he has never shown an interest in her. He never bowed so low that his head nearly scraped the ground, or held her hand in a vice grip to kiss it while resisting her attempts to pull away, give her expensive gifts, or waxed poetry about her eyes or her body. He only bowed as low as it was necessary, touched her hand with such gentleness that she barely felt it, and read her passages of books that he found interesting. He never treated her like she was special, but he had always been there, always listened to her, and told her the truth even if she didn’t like it. 

His gentleness, his openness with her, was one of the many reasons she liked him so much.

But she never imagined that he would like her back.

Sunburst’s eyes never left hers as he spoke. “Because I’ve always had feelings for you, and as we grew those feelings grew as well…I wanted to tell you, to see if I had a chance,” he looked down and spoke quickly, “but if you don’t feel the same way then that’s alright! I won’t bother you, I just…I just wanted to let you know.”

Starlight considered him, took in his wide eyes, his sun-touched hair, and his still somewhat childish features, and said, “Could you stand up for me?”

He blinked, confused but hopeful, and did as he was told. Starlight stood on top of the bolder, making her tall enough to look into his eyes without too much trouble. The wind rustled their clothes, the birds sang in the awkward silence between them and neither of them dared to move a muscle. A wave of nervousness washed over her, and she questioned her actions for a moment, but Sunburst was waiting. He always waited for her, even when he pretended that he wasn’t, always waited for her to take the first step.

So she did.

She stood on her toes, her hands on his shoulders for support as she leaned in and kissed him.

It was a clumsy attempt, having never done this before, but she counted it as a kiss since she could feel his lips on hers, even if he stood as rigid as stone. She pulled away quickly, her face red and her heart fluttering. “T-There! That was my first kiss, and you’ll give it back to me when we get married.”

Sunburst blinked and looked at her with wide eyes. “Huh?! B-But that’s not how kissing works!”

“Says who?”

He opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it again. He smiled as her words finally dawned on him and laughed out loud as he wrapped his arms around her. He hoisted her up and Starlight squealed, holding on to his shoulders for dear life as he spun them in circles.

“Sunburst!” She yelled trying to sound peevish, but her wide smile and bright eyes gave her away.

She held on tight, as tight as her thin arms could hold him, and the world spun madly around her. The blues and the greens melting into a color she couldn’t name, his arms like iron bands around her waist keeping her secure, his laughter in her ears, and the sunshine on her face. She couldn’t remember the last time they held each other like this, laughed so openly and shamelessly, but this was different from their usual childish excitement. This felt wilder, stronger and so much deeper than Starlight had ever experienced in her fourteen years of life, she couldn’t name it, and a part of her was scared by the intensity of the emotion that coursed through her veins.

But since she was with Sunburst—in his arms—she let the feelings wash over her like water over a duck’s back.

They stumbled for a moment when he set her down, keeping their arms around the other. Sunburst had to lean down since he refused to lift his face from her shoulder, and Starlight’s hands grip his shirt in a white-knuckled grip. Even with her eyes closed her world still spun, her only anchor being her best friend—her intended.

She started to tremble; her heart too full with emotion to contain any longer. 

His hold loosened, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. She wiped her cheeks hastily, embarrassed by her unseemly display. What kind of lady would cry when they were proposed to by the one they loved? She should be smiling, not crying her eyes out, but try as she might, the tears would not stop as she sobbed openly.

Sunburst gave her his handkerchief and she took it, wiping her tears and hiding her face slightly with the soft cotton. 

“I’m going to miss you,” she sniffled.

“Me too,” his tone was just as sad as hers. “But I’ll come back to you, I promise.”

“I know, but…how can you expect me to let you go when we are finally together?” She went silent when a darker thought crept into her mind, making her feel cold as she swallowed the lump in her throat. “What if…you meet another and you…!”

“Never!” He placed a hard kiss on her forehead, right next to her horn. “Starlight, my word is all I have, but I swear on my father’s grave that I could never love another. May Celestia herself strike me down if I break my vow to you.”

Her cheeks, still wet with tears, redden slightly at his declaration. “Then the same goes for me: may Luna drag me to Tartarus if my love for you isn’t true.”

Unbeknown to them, something stirred in the shadows of the forest. Something that caused the birds to scatter from their perches and the trees to shudder in the summer air. Something powerful and dark that even silenced the wind and gentle murmurs of the lake. But love is blind, they say, and blinds those that fall victim to its ways, especially for a pair as young and naïve as them.

She sealed her vow with a kiss to his cheek and laced his fingers with hers, laughing at his expression. “We should head back.”

“Let’s stay here forever,” Sunburst said, but started walking when Starlight pulled him along the familiar path.

“I wish we could…”

_Why not?_

_The Summer disappeared right before her eyes and was replaced by harsh Winter. Cold sank into her skin through the materials of her thin summer dress, making her cry out as she shivered violently in the grey forest. Thick fog curled around her ankles, unmoved by the harsh wind that howled in her ears._

_No, not wind, it was laughter, the laughter of a thousand creatures that jeered at her plight._

_Her arm was pulled violently forward, harsh enough to make her cry out and she was forced to run. Sunburst's grip on her was unyielding, but he kept his gaze ahead, his horn glowing with a soft golden light that cut through the fog._

_“Don’t look back!” he screamed and pulled her along. “Whatever you hear, don’t turn to look!”_

_Starlight could hear the howls and the laughter just behind her, like a pack of wild dogs nipping at her heels and tail. She almost didn’t hear Sunburst’s plea; her terror was so blinding and her panic all-consuming that she feared her heart would stop beating out of sheer terror. She picked up her skirts and ran, ignoring her tears of terror and the harsh grip of Sunburst's hand on her forearm, harsh enough to bruise._

_She couldn’t tell for how long they ran, but nothing they did deter their pursuers, the fog never cleared and the forest seemed never-ending. Her legs burned with the effort, and it was getting harder to breathe, she was slowing down, and she tripped more often than not, only Sunburst grip on her arm kept her from falling on her face._

_But they could not run forever, they knew. So, Sunburst made a choice before Starlight could do so._

_T_ _he cackling laughter behind them swallowed her whimper and it turned into a pained gasped when Sunburst suddenly yanked her forward._ _He stopped running and used the moment to shove her forward into the mist. Starlight stared with wide eyes as his horn glowed golden, casting some sort of protection spell over her, she recognized it by the soft warmth that suddenly enveloped her. For a split second, she saw what had been chasing them, the massive figure was blurred by the shadows and the tears in her eyes, but she saw a hundred glowing eyes staring at Sunburst, clawed hands reaching out and gracing the edges of her dress and tail._

The last thing she saw before she fell into the ravine was those shadows dragging her best friend away _._

**Author's Note:**

> I always wanted to write something using this ballad and this pairing, it suits them well, I think. This version will stick closely to the original ballad, so chapter two is where the smut happens, and chapter three is the rescue, with maybe an epilogue to tie everything nicely. 
> 
> Rating might go up if I feel the second chapter is too explicit, I'll add more tags accordingly.


End file.
